The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to a rotating and translating control panel on an information handling system chassis.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option is an information handling system (IHS). An IHS generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements may vary between different applications, IHSs may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in IHSs allow for IHSs to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, IHSs may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Some IHSs are housed in IHS chassis that may allow a variety of chassis orientations. For example, servers and/or desktop IHSs typically allow both a tower/vertical orientation and a rack/horizontal orientation. However, some of these IHSs include control panels that are at least partially located on an outer surface of the IHS chassis, and the re-orienting of the IHS chassis from one orientation (e.g., tower/vertical) to another (e.g., rack/horizontal) can render the control panel unusable.
One solution to this problem is to include a rotating control panel on the IHS chassis such that, when the IHS chassis is re-oriented, the control panel can be rotated to match the orientation of the chassis (e.g., the control panel may be rotated 90 degrees when the chassis is re-oriented from a vertical to horizontal orientation). However, providing such a control panel raises a number of issues. As the control panel must typically occupy the same space in each of the orientations (e.g., to allow a single bezel to be used for the chassis in both control panel orientations), the control panel is typically a circular shape. However, by limiting the control panel to a circular shape, the size of the control panel is limited. Furthermore, if the control panel includes a non-circular shape (for example, a square shape), the control panel may extend out from a side on the chassis during its re-orientation, which can lead to problems when attempting to reorient the control panel when the chassis is located in a limited space or next to a boundary.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an improved control panel absent the disadvantages discussed above.